Good point. I’ve been struggling for a few days with what I can possibly mean by “God exists” and still feel like this is not an empirical fact that can ever be resolved. Because the existence of God is not a scientific question. We agree, I think, that it must be based on faith or else it’s just a mundane empirical fact.
On the one hand, it seems to be a matter of interpretation. Even if we had proof that there was a set of universal laws explaining everything, I wouldn’t require that someone else find this meaningful. In this case, I personally would prefer if they said “God is meaningless” rather than “God doesn’t exist” but I can’t control what definition of God they use.
On the other hand, it may be a problem with the meaning of “existence”. I find that theists can mean God exists in a literal sense, in which case I find their views on God to be naive (and wrong), or they mean God exists in the way I mean, in which case they also seem unable to communicate what this means. I’ve been seriously toying with the idea that this concept of “existence” is an artifact of the way people-like-me think. When I think about something abstract, it seems to exist in a way, and this is the way I mean.
I’ve argued this POV in detail (but without much success) in this thread about the difference between being frequentist or Bayesian. I’ve pretty much given up on this explanation, but my interest in this topic was motivated by considering an analogy between belief in the “existence” of probability and belief in the “existence” of God. For me, while God and probability are quite different, they “exist” in a similar fashion.
Consider the set of laws of the universe, given that they exist. In what sense do they exist? You can measure their effects of course, but you infer their existence.
Perhaps I misunderstood him, but I nevertheless learned from Vladimir_Nesov that believing in the “existence” of physical laws is kind of like believing in some kind of phlogiston. I don’t consider it a demotion of God for him to only exist in the way that physical laws exist. I think this is a linguistic/communication problem only.
Good point. I’ve been struggling for a few days with what I can possibly mean by “God exists” and still feel like this is not an empirical fact that can ever be resolved. Because the existence of God is not a scientific question. We agree, I think, that it must be based on faith or else it’s just a mundane empirical fact.
On the one hand, it seems to be a matter of interpretation. Even if we had proof that there was a set of universal laws explaining everything, I wouldn’t require that someone else find this meaningful. In this case, I personally would prefer if they said “God is meaningless” rather than “God doesn’t exist” but I can’t control what definition of God they use.
On the other hand, it may be a problem with the meaning of “existence”. I find that theists can mean God exists in a literal sense, in which case I find their views on God to be naive (and wrong), or they mean God exists in the way I mean, in which case they also seem unable to communicate what this means. I’ve been seriously toying with the idea that this concept of “existence” is an artifact of the way people-like-me think. When I think about something abstract, it seems to exist in a way, and this is the way I mean.
I’ve argued this POV in detail (but without much success) in this thread about the difference between being frequentist or Bayesian. I’ve pretty much given up on this explanation, but my interest in this topic was motivated by considering an analogy between belief in the “existence” of probability and belief in the “existence” of God. For me, while God and probability are quite different, they “exist” in a similar fashion.
Consider the set of laws of the universe, given that they exist. In what sense do they exist? You can measure their effects of course, but you infer their existence.
Perhaps I misunderstood him, but I nevertheless learned from Vladimir_Nesov that believing in the “existence” of physical laws is kind of like believing in some kind of phlogiston. I don’t consider it a demotion of God for him to only exist in the way that physical laws exist. I think this is a linguistic/communication problem only.
It seems like your problem might be isomorphic to the question of whether numbers exist.
Agreed.